Who’s Normal Anyway?

On Friday afternoon we spent 6 and a half hours in traffic to travel up to Ingleton for A’s old Mountain Rescue Team families weekend. We were stuck in traffic for ages on the A17 and then in stationary traffic again all around Leeds. Not fun. We even ended up resorting to Burger King for tea on the way. We had a good weekend once we got there though.

On Saturday A went out for a day of climbing and the rest of us met up with Tech and co to go geocaching around the local area. I got lots of exercise carrying L around all day and enjoyed a long time to chat and M was really happy to see his friends again too. We visited the great stone of four stones and then did a short circular walk around a village, ending in a lovely, child friendly coffee shop for lunch. I found out L likes jacket potatoes with leek and cheese LOL. Afterwards we got ice creams and watched the sheep auctions.

Later in the afternoon we drove to White Scar cave and were going to go down and do the tour, but L had fallen asleep in the car and I was reluctant to wake him so D babysat him by the car while the rest of us did some retail therapy in the shop. A phoned to say he’d just driven past us on the way to a cafe after climbing, and then we went back to the hostel to get showered and changed.

In the evening we went for a curry with Tech and co. When we got back we were just in time to join in with the quiz evening with the MRT people and M went on a sticker hunt for the kids while we got drinks and tried to answered general knowledge questions. At the end of 5 rounds our team won and we got a bottle of wine. We also got chance to chat to more of the team and wives/girlfriends. It’s funny how much they’ve changed since A first started and they were all (apart from A) young and single. Now there were 2 other babies and a couple of people were talking about allotments and it was all very grown up LOL.

On Sunday we went out to where A had been climbing on Saturday to take M and 2 other boys who were staying with their dads climbing, though in the end one was a bit too small tof it the helmet etc safely so he just did some rock scrambling. It was the first time M has climbed outdoors on proper rocks and he did really well, getting pretty high and trying really hard and thinking about where he was putting his hands and feet. The walk up to the crags was a bit of a pull on the thighs but I got there in the end and the view was lovely until the mist started to come in. L played close by and then slept and I took pictures with the long zoom.

We got back to the hostel in time for a rushed tea at 4pm because they’d only just found out we needed to clear the hostel by 4.30pm! Then we drove home and did it in 4 and a half hours, much better than the drive up.